Wednesday, December 2, 2009

[H]ere’s one you don’t see very often: the Interior Minister of a country suggesting the people should literally hit back at the police. As reported in the Washington Post, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev stated:

May a citizen hit back at a policeman who has attacked him? Yes he may; if he is not a criminal, if he is walking along quietly and breaking no rules.

Moreover, the Power Vertical quotes a Russian MP, Andrei Makarov, as suggesting:

You can neither modernize nor reform the Interior Ministry. You can only abolish it. The whole police force needs to be decommissioned and cleansed with help from civil society and human rights groups.’

While such a comment might not be unexpected from an opposition deputy (to the extent that any even exist in Russia these days), what is particularly interesting is that Makarov is actually a fairly prominent member of Russia’s ruling party, United Russia.